Page 134 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

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EuroDisney is a case in point for Disney. Even though partnerships have
always been central to Disney’s business strategy, the company deviated from
standard practice when it came to building the French theme park. For
example, in the early 1990s at both of its domestic sites, Disney retained a
percentage of the hotel rooms (14 percent at Walt Disney World) and also
entered into partnerships with other hotels, such as the Sheraton chain. But
management avoided partnership arrangements with any French hotels, which
meant that the rooms were not furnished to French tastes. For example, the
French expect fireplaces in their vacation villas and Disney had neglected this
detail. Today, Disney has corrected this problem by retrofitting each room
with a fireplace.
One of the biggest mistakes, though, was in naming the park. The
French are enormously proud of their country and their culture, and they
greatly resented the lack of a French identity in the EuroDisney name. In this
instance, the entire population of France was, in effect, Disney’s partner, and
in forgetting the lesson Walt took away from the Oswald calamity (that is, to
know and understand your partner’s culture and values), the company made
a serious error.
Fortunately, Disney took steps to rectify the problems before the ven-
ture failed completely. Today, the park is known as Disneyland Paris, and
refinancing has established partnerships within the business community.
Not surprisingly, the park has demonstrated clear signs of a successful turn-
around.
Disney has suffered the consequences of reneging on the implicit part-
nership it maintains with employees at home, too. For example, when prob-
lems arose with Disney’s Golf Resort Hotel (now Shades of Green® Resort,
an Armed Forces Recreation Center (AFRC) in Walt Disney World that is
owned by the federal government for exclusive use by armed service members
and their families), management went through the motions of welcoming
front-line input from employees, then promptly rejected it.
To determine why the Golf Resort’s occupancy rate hovered in the low
90 percent range while every other Walt Disney World hotel was actually
over 100 percent by having guests on a waiting list, management called its
reservations staff together. “The problem,” the staff said, “is in the name.
Most reservations are made by wives. When they see the word golf, warning
signals go up. They don’t want their husbands to spend vacation days on the
golf course instead of joining in the family fun at the park. So they request
reservations at one of the other hotels.”